The hero formula has different iterations and is hugely popular in movies of course (think Rocky, GoodWill Hunting, The King’s Speech and a dozen more). But it is great in sales (no matter what you sell, be it products or ideas). And it is great in marketing and business (think Apple/ Steve Jobs, the band Aerosmith etc.). Good stories stick and help you sell whatever it is that you do.

I got some questions about how it really sounds with a product or service. Here is an example and it is true – I’ve heard it first hand from people in the trenches. That is the key- don’t make stuff up. Instead, craft (as I did here) the truth leveraging the formula- you’d be surprised how often success follows the formula.

“An electrician I know lost most of his commercial business in a bid. CVS stores were his life and now they were gone. He needed to get into residential work in a big way and started smartly to build an online presence like a website, a Facebook page and trying to blog etc. as he knew the way word of mouth works is changing. But he did it on his own and it was a huge amount of work for him and his family- much more than he thought. He called us for a reorder of business cards one day and I started sharing how we could do a lot of that work managing his online presence making it so much easier for him and 4 months later he’s got close to 1000 followers on his Facebook page and gets about 30 solid leads a week off his website for residential work.”

The nice thing about hero stories is they don’t have to be yours. You can share regardless. “One of my colleagues has a client that…” will work just fine. Hero stories are sticky sticky sticky. They are centered on the Hero and how your product/ idea or service helped the Hero in their journey to success. That’s nice. And better, that’s effective.